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Dept of Health

Answer

Mr. Luff: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what proportion of the population of England he estimates to be undiagnosed for (a) tuberculosis and (b) hepatitis C. [200103] Miss Melanie Johnson: It is not possible to generate reliable estimates on numbers of undiagnosed active tuberculosis cases in England. Most undiagnosed cases present to the health service at some point during their illness. Delays to diagnosis will result in either recovery, eventual presentation to health services with advanced disease or death. The number of active tuberculosis cases who recover is unknown and numbers of cases who present with advanced disease are not routinely collected. The number of cases of tuberculosis diagnosed on post- mortem is collected by the Health Protection Agency's (HPA) enhanced tuberculosis surveillance system. This data represents the number of tuberculosis cases per annum who are found to have tuberculosis at post mortem. Tuberculosis is however not necessarily the cause of death or a contributory factor to death. In a large proportion of these cases, tuberculosis is likely to be an incidental finding. The number of cumulative hepatitis C laboratory diagnoses reported, 38,000, to the HPA is lower than the estimate for the overall population prevalence. This suggests that the majority of hepatitis C infections have not been diagnosed. The estimate of the number of individuals infected with hepatitis C is 250,000, but the figure for those who have gone on to develop chronic hepatitis C infection in England is 200,000, as in some cases the infection clears spontaneously.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

200103; 428 c360W

Session

2004-05

Subjects

Diagnosis Hepatitis Population Tuberculosis

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk